What is suspicious about Sickert's alleged plans to visit Normandy at the end of September and part of October is that there is no mention of him in letters exchanged among his friends. One would think if Sickert had been in Dieppe, then Moore or Blanche might have mentioned seeing him - or not seeing him. One might suppose that when Sickert wrote Blanche in August, he might have mentioned that he would be in France next month and hoped to see him - or would be sorry to miss him.
There is no mention in the letters of Degas or Whistler that they saw Sickert in September or October 1888, and no hint that they had a clue he was in France. Letters Sickert wrote to Blanche in the autumn of 1888 appear to have been written in London, because they are written on Sickert's 54 Broadhurst Gardens stationery, which apparently he did not use except when he was actually there. The only indication I could find that he was in France at all during the autumn of 1888 is an undated note to Blanche that Sickert supposedly wrote from the small fishing village Saint-Valery-en-Caux, twenty miles from Dieppe:
"This is a nice little place to sleep amp; eat in," Sickert writes, "which is what I am most anxious to do now."
The envelope is missing and there is no postmark to prove that Sickert was in Normandy. Nor is there any way to determine where Blanche was. But Sickert very well may have been in Saint-Valery-en-Caux when he wrote the letter. He probably did need rest and nourishment after his frenzied violent activities, and crossing the Channel was not an ordeal. I find it curious if not suspicious that he chose St. Valery when he could have stayed in Dieppe.
In fact, it is curious that he wrote Blanche at all, because most of the note is about Sickert's "looking for a colorman" so he could send his brother Bernhard "pastel glass paper or sand paper canvass." Sickert said he wanted a "packet of samples" and that he did not know "French measurements." I fail to understand how Sickert, who was fluent in French and had spent so much time in France, did not know where to find samples of papers. "I am a French painter," he declared in a letter to Blanche, yet the scientifically and mathematically inclined Sickert says he didn't know French measurements.
Perhaps Sickert's letter from St. Valery was sincere. Perhaps he did want Blanche's advice. Or perhaps the truth is that Sickert was exhausted and paranoid and on the run, and thought it wise to supply himself with an alibi. Apart from this note to Blanche, I could find nothing to suggest that Sickert spent any time at all in France during the late summer, early fall, or winter of 1888. The bathing - or swimming - season for Normandy was over as well. It began in early July and by the end of September, Sickert's friends closed down their Dieppe homes and studios.
Sickert's salon of artists and prominent friends would have scattered until the following summer. I wonder if it seemed a little strange to Ellen that her husband planned to join "his people" in Normandy for several weeks when nobody was likely to be there. I wonder if she saw her husband much at all, and if she did, did she think he was behaving a bit oddly? In August, Sickert the compulsive letter writer sent a note to Blanche, apologizing for not "writing for so long. I have been very hard at work, and I find it very difficult to find 5 minutes to write a letter."
There is no reason to believe Sickert's "work" was related to the toils of his trade - beyond his going to music halls and seeking inspiration from the streets all hours of the night. His artistic productivity wasn't at its usual high from August through the rest of the year. Paintings "circa 1888" are few, and there is no guarantee that "circa" didn't mean a year or two earlier or later. I found only one published article from 1888, and that was in the spring. It seems that Sickert avoided his friends for much of that year. There is no indication he summered in Dieppe - which was very unusual. No matter where he went or when, it is clear that Sickert wasn't following his usual routines, if one could call anything Sickert did "routine."
In the late nineteenth century, passports, visas, and other forms of identification were not required to travel on the Continent. (However, by late summer of 1888, passports were required to enter Germany from France.) There is no mention of Sickert having any form of "picture identification" until World War I, when he and his second wife, Christine, were issued laissez-passers to show guards at tunnels, railway crossings, and other strategic places as they traveled about France.
Entering France from England was an easy and friendly transition and remained so during the years Sickert traveled to and fro. Crossing the English Channel in the late 1800s could take as little as four hours in good weather. One could travel by express train and "fast" steamer seven days a week, twice daily, with the trains leaving Victoria Station at 10:30 in the morning or London Bridge at 10:45. The steamer sailed out of Newhaven at 12:45 P.M. and arrived in Dieppe around dinnertime. A single, one-way first-class ticket to Dieppe was twenty-four shillings, second class was seventeen shillings, and part of this Express Tidal Service included trains from Dieppe straight through to Rouen and Paris.
Sickert's mother claimed she never knew when her son would suddenly go to France or suddenly come back. Maybe he hopped back and forth from England to Dieppe while the Ripper crimes were going on in 1888, but if he did, it was probably to cool off. He had been going to Dieppe since childhood and kept several places there. French death and crime statistics for the Victorian era do not seem to have survived, and it was not possible to find records of homicides then that might even remotely resemble the Ripper's crimes. But Dieppe was simply too small a town to commit lust-murders and get away with it.
During the days I spent in Dieppe, with its narrow old streets and passageways, its rocky shore and soaring cliffs that sheer off into the Channel, I tried to see that small seaside village as a killing ground for Sickert, but I could not. His work while he was in Dieppe reflects a different spirit. Most of the pictures he painted there are in lovely colors, his depictions of buildings inspiring. There is nothing morbid or violent in most of his Normandy art. It is as if Dieppe brought out the side of Sickert's face that is turned to the light in his Jekyll and Hyde self-portraits.
Chapter Eighteen. A Shiny Black Bag
The sun did not show itself on Saturday, September 29th, and a persistent, cold rain chilled the night as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ended its long run at the Lyceum. The newspapers reported that the "great excesses of sunshine were at an end."
Elizabeth Stride only recently had moved out of a lodging house on Dorset Street in Spitalfields, where she had been living with Michael Kidney, a waterside laborer who was in the Army Reserve. Long Liz, as her friends called her, had left Kidney before. She carried her few belongings with her this time, but there was no reason to assume she was gone for good. Kidney would later testify at her inquest that now and then she wanted her freedom and an opportunity to indulge her "drinking habits," but after a spell of wandering off, she always came back.
Elizabeth's maiden name was Gustafsdotter and she would have turned 45 on November 27th, although she had led most people to believe she was about ten years younger than she really was. Elizabeth had led a life of lies, most of them pitiful attempts to weave a brighter, more dramatic tale than the truth of her depressing, desperate life. She was born in Torslanda, near Goteborg, Sweden, the daughter of a farmer. Some said she spoke fluent English without a trace of an accent. Others claimed she did not properly form her words and sounded like a foreigner. Swedish, her native tongue, is a Germanic language closely related to Danish, which is what Sickert's father spoke.